Saket Vora

I had a mixup with the Stanford Career Development Center that I spent a good part of the day sorting out. See, there is a special level of access tier called ‘Cardinal Recruiting’ . On top of opening a general account with the website (allows you to search for jobs/internships, apply for them, etc), Cardinal Recruiting is an additional thing you have to apply for. Some more exclusive firms only select from that tier. Having come from NC State, where everyone is treated the same, I wasn’t aware of this distinction. As a result, I missed some deadlines to submit via the CDC website. Argh. I wish I had gotten a better clarification of this earlier.

Anyway, tonight I attended a screening of King Korn, a documentary about what I call the corn conspiracy. Ok maybe that’s fair. The film follows two young guys with no farming experience as they go to Iowa to grow an acre of corn and see where it goes. Learning about corn leads them to explore where corn goes and the role it plays in our lifestyle. Having just read Michael Pollan’s excellent book The Omnivore’s Dilemma (and no, for the record it doesn’t espouse a vegetarian diet, learn more about the book) over winter break, I was very interested to see it. They overall do a good job. They don’t proscribe a diet or anything. It is a film geared towards audiences, not like a History Channel documentary. Afterward, the producer and one of the two main characters came on stage and answered some questions. I asked them a question about the ammonia fertilizer and how it is made with copious amounts of petroleum. The producer answered it pretty well I think.

Michael Pollan (professor at Berkeley) is coming to campus later this quarter. Will definitely go hear him speak.

Finally, a summer frisbee friend Derek Lundberg at UNC has gotten in contact with a distinguished professor of economics here at Stanford. Derek is leading a project to collect signatures about an agreement regarding access and delivery of essential medicines to people in need all over the world. The movement has an impressive list of signatories so far, and I volunteered to help get Dr. Arrow’s. I give him most of the credit as being the driving force behind this. I’m playing just a bit part. I meet with Dr. Arrow next Friday.